tons. The Greeks had their stories of the silly sayings and doings
of the people of Baeotia, Sidonia, Abdera, etc. Among the Perso-Arabs the
folk of Hums (ancient Emessa) are reputed to be exceedingly stupid. The
Kabail, or wandering tribes of Northern Africa, consider the Beni Jennad
as little better than idiots. The Schildburgers are the noodles of
German popular tales. In Switzerland the townsmen of Belmont, near
Lausanne, are typical blockheads. And England has her "men of Gotham"--a
village in Nottinghamshire--who are credited with most of the noodle
stories which have been current among the people for centuries past,
though other places share to some extent in their not very enviable
reputation: in Yorkshire the "carles" of Austwick, in Craven; some
villages near Marlborough Downs, in Wiltshire; and in the counties of
Sutherland and Ross, the people of Assynt.

But long before the men of Gotham were held up to ridicule as fools, a
similar class of stories had been told of the men of Norfolk, as we
learn from a curious Latin poem, _Descriptio Norfolciensium_,
written, probably, near the end of the twelfth century, by a monk of
Peterborough, which is printed in Wright's _Early Mysteries and Other
Latin Poems_. This poem sets out with stating that Caesar having
despatched messengers throughout the provinces to discover which were
bad and which were good, on their return they reported Norfolk as the
most sterile, and the people the vilest and different from all other
peoples. Among the stories related of the stupidity of the men of
Norfolk is the following: Being oppressed by their lord, they gave him a
large sum of money on condition that he should relieve them from future
burdens, and he gave them his bond to that effect, sealed with a seal of
green wax. To celebrate this, they all went to the tavern and got drunk.
When it became dark, they had no candle, and were puzzled how to procure
one, till a clever fellow among the revellers suggested that they should
use the wax seal of the bond for a candle--they should still have the
words of the bond, which their lord could not repudiate; so they made
the wax seal into a candle, and burned it while they continued their
merry-making. This exploit coming to the knowledge of their lord, he
reimposes the old burdens on the rustics, who complain of his injustice,
at the same time producing the bond. The lord calls a clerk to examine
the document, who pronounces it to be null an